I WAS DES­PER­ATE TO GET DAN SAYS ED­DIE

ED­DIE Howe hopes Dan Gosling will prove to be the per­fect match for Bournemouth af­ter the for­mer New­cas­tle mid­fielder on a four-year deal.

Af­ter fin­ish­ing tenth last term man­ager Howe has wasted lit­tle time in strength­en­ing his team as he plots a play-off push next time around.

For­mer Ever­ton man Gosling failed to nail down a reg­u­lar start­ing place at St James’ Park af­ter his ar­rival as one of the club’s first sign­ings on their re­turn to the top flight in 2010, with in­juries restrict­ing his progress.

The Eng­land U21 in­ter­na­tional scored twice in 14 games on loan at Black­pool this sea­son and, with his cur­rent con­tract ex­pir­ing this sum­mer, Howe swooped for one of his top tar­gets.

“He is a box-to-box cen­tral mid­fielder who has lots of en­ergy. He is very good tech­ni­cally and also has a goal in him,” said Howe, who will see the deal of­fi­cially go through on July 1.

“He is an at­tack-minded player who can do all dis­ci­plines of the game so I think he will com­ple­ment our team very well.

“We are look­ing to build all the time and I think he will give us dif­fer­ent op­tions.We had to fight off some com­pe­ti­tion to get him and it is al­ways a good sign when other clubs are in­ter­ested.

“We are de­lighted he chose us ahead of them. I think he was at­tracted by our style of play and our vi­sion for him so, hope­fully, it is a good match and we will both get what we are look­ing for from the sign­ing.”